Week 13 - Tarts: Blueberry Bakewell Tarts

This weeks recipe of the Blueberry Bakewell Tarts should be simpler to make compared to previous week's Stilton and Potato Pie which was quite laborious. These Bakewell Tarts are very tasty as my mother has made this recipe before so I am looking forward to trying my hand at making a batch.

The pastry

For the pastry I sifted 200g of plain flour into a bowl and then rubbed in using my fingertips 100g of chilled unsalted butter. Once the mixture looked like breadcrumbs I then stirred in 40g of icing sugar. The recipe said to add the beaten egg using a palette knife but I don't own a palette knife so I used a dinner knife instead which worked just as well. I mixed the egg with the dry ingredients until a ball of dough was formed.

The dough ball

I wrapped the dough in cling film and placed it into the fridge to chill. The recipe said to chill the dough for at least 30 minutes, but I had to teach a piano lesson so had to leave my dough in the fridge for about 3 hours.

Once I was able to continue with making the tarts, I removed the dough from the fridge and left it to soften slightly as it was quite hard from being chilled for several hours. The recipe said to roll out the dough between a sheet of grease proof paper and the cling film that it had been wrapped in. I found it quite hard to properly roll out the dough like this and had to apply quite a lot of pressure to the rolling pin so that the dough reached a thickness of 3mm.

The rolled out dough

As I was running short of time, I decided to cheat slightly in the method that I used to make the tart pastry cases. First I cut out 12 circles of pastry using my large round cutter. Then I slotted the circles into each hole in the greased muffin tray and gently pressed the dough down so that the base and sides of the tart case were created.

The 12 tart cases

The recipes method of cutting out individual pieces of pastry to make the sides and base of each tart case would have taken me much longer to do. Once I had finished putting in the circles, I put the tray into the fridge to chill for 15 minutes.

The frangipane

To make the frangipane I put 55g of unsalted butter, 55g of caster sugar, 1 egg, 40g of ground almonds and 15g of plain flour into a bowl.  I mixed all of the ingredients together using my electric mixer until they were thoroughly combined.

The frangipane

Putting it all together

I first pricked the bottom of each pastry case with a fork and placed 1 teaspoon of  ready made blueberry jam into each tart case.

Tart cases with the added blueberry jam

Next I spooned the frangipane mixture over the blueberry jam until each tart case was filled to the top.

The tart cases filled with frangipane 

I placed the muffin tray into the preheated oven set to Gas Mark 3 and baked the tarts for 30 minutes until the frangipane had turned a golden color. Once baked, I left the tarts to cool for 10 minutes before removing them from the tray and placing them onto a wire rack.

The baked tarts

I mixed together the icing sugar with a little water so as to create a stiff paste and covered the top of each tart with the icing. For the final touch I topped each tart with one or two blueberries.

The finished Blueberry Bakewell Tarts

The verdict

The Blueberry Bakewell Tarts were truly delicious and so straight forward to make. The recipe said to only add 1/2 teaspoon of jam to each tart, but I'm glad I added 1 teaspoon as this made a good layer of jam underneath the frangipane. My family loved the tarts and they got gobbled up very quickly. I can definitely say I will be making the Blueberry Bakewell Tarts again.

Next Week's Baking Challenge:

Palm Leaves and Almond Straws